


get kinda hectic inside

by SafelyCapricious



Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [13]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pern Fusion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Heartbreak, Jon Snow and the Starks Are Not Related, Mutual Pining, Pern (Dragonriders of Pern), if these idiots were trees they'd be evergreens because they
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27000241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: “Do you think riding a gold dragon makes you crazy?” Arya asks, bursting into the room more like a herd beast than a human.“I don’t know,” Sansa says, dryly, quickly putting the shielding up on her lamp to keep Arya’s furious movements from blowing it out. “Do you think riding a green dragon makes one a brat?”Arya stops for a moment before snickering, “I’m gonna tell Nymerieth you said that.”“I said it about you, not Nymerieth,” Sansa points out, reasonably, turning back to darning socks, “I would never insult Nymerieth — she’s wonderful.”
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: ain't no grave can hold my body down [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950148
Comments: 20
Kudos: 70





	get kinda hectic inside

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics from Mariah Carey's Fantasy (again, playing when I was trying to post and sobbing about the end note). 
> 
> For fictober day 13, for "Skin" ~~I GUESS????? idk man the link between the prompts and the fics is getting sketchier and sketchier and we're all aware of it.~~
> 
> ALSO for anyone not familiar with Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Pern series...one, probably good for you, two, I have tried very hard for the fic to be understandable without any indepth knowledge necessary. _However_ I have included some notes, see end note, to clarify points if you'd like. (Feel free to go there before reading the fic, no judgement.)

“Do you think riding a gold dragon makes you crazy?” Arya asks, bursting into the room more like a herd beast than a human.

“I don’t know,” Sansa says, dryly, quickly putting the shielding up on her lamp to keep Arya’s furious movements from blowing it out. “Do you think riding a green dragon makes one a brat?”

Arya stops for a moment before snickering, “I’m gonna tell Nymerieth you said that.”

“I said it about you, not Nymerieth,” Sansa points out, reasonably, turning back to darning socks, “I would never insult Nymerieth — she’s wonderful.”

Arya preens, as she always does when anyone compliments her dragon, before she finishes stripping out of her flying gear. She, at least, leaves it in a pile off to the side now, instead of leaving it spread across the whole room like she used to with her clothes when they were younger.

Sansa smothers a smile as her sister heads to the bathing chamber, ignoring the groaning of old pipes as she fills one of the basins so she can rinse with sand soap.

“But you haven’t heard, have you?” her voice is somewhat muffled by the sound of splashing, but still there’s something about the tone that sets Sansa’s teeth on edge and she carefully ties off her thread and places the needle in it’s cushion before responding.

“Probably not. Your wing is the first one back — R’obb and T’eon’s wings are still doing the rounds of the guild halls.” Sansa says, even as she picks up another sock and tries to decide if this one is salvageable or not. R’obb’s wing — his bronze Windeth and the other eight dragons and their riders — are out doing diplomatic rounds. Whereas T’eon’s was supposed to be trading — so Sansa is already expecting just the most awful colors of all the fabrics he and his bring back.

Arya doesn’t respond immediately, which is another reason for concern, Sansa feels, and when she does her voice is flatter than usual, especially when she’s sharing gossip. “Daenerys has gone _insane_.”

Talk of the Weyr woman of Valyria Weyr, or even just Valyria Weyr always makes Sansa’s heart hurt — for all that it happened well over fifteen years ago and she should’ve gotten over it. She thinks, maybe, that’s why Arya is being so uncharacteristically careful with her words. For all that they never talk about it, she knows her sister is aware that her heartbreak hasn’t abated. “Oh?” she prompts, eventually, after taking another deep breath and bracing herself.

“She fed firestone to Rhaenyth,” comes Arya’s reply, and Sansa takes a sharp breath and drops the sock she’s holding.

“She did _what_?” she asks, for all that she’s sure she didn’t mishear — to feed firestone to her dragon — to her _gold_ — is to make the dragon infertile. It is unfathomable. Only gold dragons lay eggs and they _need_ them to do so if they don’t want a future with no dragons at all.

“It gets _worse_ ,” her sister says, emerging finally from the washroom, using a cloth on her hair before sitting very close to Sansa. Closer than they normally sit if they aren’t shoved into a bench in the mess, at any rate. “But he’s okay.”

“What,” she grips her sister’s hand, for all that she knows Arya is trying to be reassuring, “what happened?”

“J’onn tried to stop her,” Arya says, grip just a little too tight, but that helps to ground her, “and she had Rhaenyth shove him _inbetween,_ right before she made the jump and tried to go to the Red Star.”

Sansa’s vision goes grey — for all that Arya says he’s okay he couldn’t possibly be — going _inbetween_ without a dragon to pull you out — is a death sentence. The cold blackness of _inbetween_ is hard enough when jumping place to place, and that only lasts for heartbeats not — not forever.

“Somehow,” Arya continues, and her voice sounds like it’s coming from a long way off, through a tunnel, “Ghosteth was able to go after him and _catch_ him and they both came out. He’s got some frostbite that might never heal, and Ghosteth lost some pigment — he looks really cool now, to be honest, all pale — almost silver — but he really is going to be fine, Sans, I swear.”

“You’re sure?” she asks, because her heart is in her throat and her hands are shaking and — Arya won’t lie to her, even if she sometimes wishes she would.

“He’ll be fine,” her sister says, confidently, and Sansa leans down to rest her forehead against her knees and take a few deep breaths.

She lost him, long before this — over fifteen years ago when he Impressed a dragon and went back home, when he was no longer a fosterling at Winter Weyr, and maybe if he had impressed a brown or a green or a blue — but no. He’d Impressed Ghosteth, a bronze dragon, and while there could only be one bronze that flew the gold to mate, she’d known J'onn too well and known that his bronze would win and mate the gold. And J'onn would have to mimic his dragon with the gold rider and there was no longer a place in his life for her.

So Sansa had stepped back gracefully, and lost him. Any talk of an arrangement between the two of them had died as soon as he’d Impressed, after all. And sure enough, within five years Ghosteth had flown Rhaenyth and he’d become Daenerys’s lover. And who could possibly want a Head woman, busy with the running of the hearth, often called away for domestic disputes, when they could have the Weyr woman, in charge of the whole Weyr who could ride a dragon at their side?

Arya pets her back, roughly, much like she scratches Nymerieth, but it makes her feel more grounded.

She can handle this. He’s still alive. He’s still not hers. But he’s still alive.

That’s all that matters.

***

“How is Jayne Poole — do you think she’s ready to try acting as an actual Head woman, or would that be too much pressure for her?” Talisa asks her, several days later, the Weyr woman slipping into the bench seat opposite her as Sansa dices red fruit for pies. Sansa has asked herself the same question numerous times — Jayne knows it all in theory: how to run the kitchen, to keep the laundry going, to keep an eye on the stock and make sure no one is skimping their duties, but she’s never truly had the chance to practice.

“I think she’s ready — I’ve tried to leave her in charge for a few days, here and there, but she doubts herself too much and comes to me instead of trusting. I’m not sure what to do about that,” Sansa says, honestly, even as she shoves another knife and pile of fruit across the table to her good sister. No one gets away with not working in her kitchen, even the Weyr woman who is, technically in charge of her. If she didn’t want to work she would’ve called Sansa to her, in any case.

“Great,” Talisa smiles in a way that Sansa is inclined to be wary of — it reminds her far too much of Arya. “Then you’ll leave her in charge when you head off.”

Sansa arches an eyebrow and slows her dicing so that she can focus all of her attention on Talisa. “Where am I going?”

Talisa’s smile, if anything, gets bigger, even as she ducks her head and seems to focus intently on her own cutting. “We’re going to send you off to help out at Valyria Weyr. Their head woman, Missandei, was very close with the late Weyr woman and is not handling the loss well. So you’ll help until either she’s back on her feet, so to speak, or she decides she’s done with the lot of us.”

“You’re sending me to Valyria,” she asks, flatly, placing her knife carefully on the table.

“Yup,” Talisa pops the p but doesn’t look up. “We’re sending you to help, Dorne Weyr is sending Adrienne for the short term, while we all decide if it’s a position one of the existing young golds should be given or if we need to wait for the next hatching. Highgarden Weyr is prepared to offer wing support, for thread, if needed.”

“I see,” Sansa says, as she takes a breath and carefully goes back to cutting. “When will I go?” she asks, just before Talisa gets up to leave.

“Within the seven day,” is the reply she gets, and really the one she was expecting. She nods and focuses all her attention on the fruit for the pies, taking careful deep breaths as she does.

***

Her heart breaks when she sees him. He’s bed bound, which she expected, but he looks smaller than she’s used to. Or maybe just the memory of him has become bigger than life, as time has passed.

It’s been years since she’s seen him.

She has seen him since he left, since he Impressed and went to Valyria Weyr, but she’s done her best to keep any interaction brief. (She told herself it was for his sake, so that he didn’t have to see her when he was with Daenerys — but mostly it was for herself, so she didn’t have to see him happier with Daenerys then he’d ever been with her.)

They’ve put him in one of the healing rooms on the outer edge of the Weyr, with a window that Ghosteth can stick his head in. And for all that Arya was right, Ghosteth is pale and hardly looks a Bronze at all, he still looks healthy and hale.

He sticks his head in now, and coos at her, and she holds out a hand.

She’s spent too long around dragons to have fear of them, but she’s never been one to venture where she’s not wanted, and so she’ll take her cue from him.

He purrs at her and arches his neck, and so she smiles and reaches out to rub careful fingers over the ridges just behind his eyes. “You are a handsome boy, aren’t you?” He cranes his neck and she has to step closer to keep scratching and so she does and then he’s nudging her with his wedge shaped head and she can’t help but laugh.

“Ah, missed that sound,” is whispered hoarsely from the cot and she whirls around, one hand steadying herself on Ghosteth to stare at J’onn, whose eyes are barely open and look glossy with fever, and she’s reminded abruptly why she’s in here.

“Hush now, it’s time for your next dose,” she says, and releases her grasp of the dragon to round the bed where she’s left the medicine so that she can get it into him before he starts feeling more pain.

“M’I dead?” he asks, and her hands falter on pouring the correct amount into the cup.

She presses her hand to her mouth and has to take two deep breaths before she can speak without her voice wavering. “No, you’re at Valyria Weyr, J’onn. Ghosteth is at the window, if you can see him. You’ve been in bed for three weeks now. You’re going to be fine.”

“Oh,” he mumbles something else she can’t hear, and when she glances his eyes are closed again and he’s limp against the pillows. She lets out another great breath, finishes pouring, and then makes her way to his bedside. She doesn’t sit, afraid of jostling him and causing him additional pain, instead hovering and reaching out a gentle hand to cup the back of his neck so raise his head.

“I need you to drink this, love, it will help you heal,” she realizes she’s crying before any tears can land on his raw skin, and she uses her shoulder to dash them away. She won’t hurt him. She won’t.

“You’re here,” he says and his eyes open just enough that she can see the bright glitter of his eyes, “you’re actually here. With me. I missed you.”

“Hush now,” she says, and carefully tips the cup to his lips. He swallows on his own, feverish eyes still fixed on her face until the medicine starts to work and his eyelids dip closed and his breath evens out. She is careful setting his head back down and resists the urge to brush his hair back. Any touch, she’s been told, is a pain to him with his skin regrowing over much of his body.

The between is all cold and darkness, and he’d been there too long. They’re lucky he’s not lost his limbs — and that probably only because he’d been wearing his dragon leathers at the time. But still his skin is healing, as is everything else, and existence is pain for him for now.

Hopefully not for much longer, he’s already getting better. They told her he was barely lucid for seconds when he’d first been brought back.

Ghosteth coos from the window and she goes to him and wraps her arms around his head and cries on him, because she needs the comfort and he seems willing to give it.

Her poor J’onn.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna chat come bug me on my [writing tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/capriciouswrites).
> 
> OKAY NOTES ABOUT PERN: (There are canon notes, which is to say, if I continue this I might fuck with some of these but for now, s'what it is.) 
> 
> Pern is a feudal world ~~(that actually is a from people landing from space ships and then used all the parts until they're back in medieval kinda times but whatever lets not get into that mess and apparently no one kept any goddamn records)~~ , with a feudalistic society that revolves around 1. Crafthalls (kinda like guilds?) 2. Holds (places most people live that are able to be completely locked down in case of thread) 3. Weyrs (where there be dragons!)
> 
> We only care about the Weyrs, so I'm going to ignore the rest of it since it's not relevant to this fic. The Weyrs are the homes of the dragonriders, usually kind of in/on mountains. There are Weyrs scattered about, each with it's own territory that it protects (from thread...we'll get to thread eventually). There are five different colors of dragons, which denote gender, size and rank. Smaller and more common to larger and least common: Green, Blue, Brown, Bronze, Gold. Greens and Gold are Girls and Blue, Brown and Bronze are Boys (see what she did there?). Only Gold dragons are fertile, and are also referred to as "Queens" as they're top of the hierarchy -- a rider of a Gold is always a woman, but the rider of a Green maybe any gender. Also, Bronze riders are always guys, but blue and brown can be whoever. Traditionally, when a male rider Impresses (has a dragon choose them), they shorten their name and contract the first syllable, which I obviously fucked with for names so just go with it.
> 
> The rider of the oldest Gold (if there is more than one at the Weyr) is the Weyr woman and basically in charge of everything at the Weyr. When the Gold rises to mate, whichever Bronze is the strongest & fastest & cleverest will "fly her" (or mate her) and, at the same time, the riders will have sex. That's because dragons form an empathic and telepathic bond with their rider when they're hatched (which, is when you Impress a dragon or when Impression happens), and so when one has sex the other one has to. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> Whoever's Bronze "flew" the Gold becomes the Weyr leader and is basically in charge alongside the Weyr woman (at least until another dragon mates hers). 
> 
> Bronze dragons lead fighting wings as Wingleaders, or maybe Wingseconds. What they're fighting is thread, which is like this fire parasite that falls from the sky when the "red star" is close. Dragon fire kills thread. Additionally, dragons can travel both in time and space a bit, going "inbetween" to a very very cold dark place and popping out on the other side at a different time or location (usually less than a day, and has to be a place they know I think).
> 
> Directly underneath the Weyr woman and Weyr leader is the Head woman who basically runs the day to day operation of the Weyr -- the healing rooms, the kitchens, the laundry, etc. 
> 
> I think that's all I have. If you have additional questions either ask in a comment or on tumblr. Thanks ya'll.


End file.
